The Santa contest entries and a second round

We want to thank those who entered our contest for Santa-themed maps. We're quite happy with the range of entries and are currently deciding on a winner.

We wanted to share them with you in the hope of inspiring new entries. We suspect that there is many a GIS person at work without much to do (after all, you're reading this blog right now) and this week would be a perfect time to make a map. Not many people around the office, just marking time on the clock until the end of the year break. Although the first contest is over, we're running a second round with the same rules and prizes (see here). All entries have to be emailed by 8am EST on Friday, December 23rd.

But on with this round of maps.

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First, is a quasi-entry from someone who may want to remain anonymous given the incomplete nature of this map. He notes, "Didn't have time to develop a complete plan for the Santa vs. Zombies contest, but did find a nice image of brains on a silver platter, live traced in Illustrator, then imported as a symbol into ArcMap." Well done we say, but why not take some time this week to further develop it? Tons of potential here.

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Our second entry is from Ate Poorthuis who went the open-source GIS route. Using QGIS and Photoshop he notes, "no fancy analysis from me this time but thought the Jesus versus Devil thing was kind of fun. Obviously the devil clusters are related to place names. The most prominent ones are Kill Devil Hills, NC and Devil's Lake, WI. Nonetheless, you can see the Bible Belt and Salt Lake City quite clearly. I have no explanation for the cluster around Seattle - most other cities have at least a devil point or two + Seattle doesn't strike me as the most religious city in the US."

Indeed, the results for Seattle are rather surprising. Perhaps it is tied to the "mellowness" we documented in the area that even makes the devil more laid back.

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Our third entry comes from Duane Griffin [1] with a map that we're quite frankly really creeped out by. I made sure my laptop was closed last night so it couldn't escape.


Duane outlines his method as, "I aggregated all of the Satan/Lucifer/zombies/etc. as Team Satan, aggregated all the religious and holiday categories and everything else as Team Santa (including fatman and robot santa), and mapped them Fox-style to hype up the threat. The "Mostly" category is based on the team ratio." The result is a road map of "badness". While Las Vegas comes as no surprise, who knew that Wyoming was so Satan-ridden? And I'm going to think twice before heading out to the middle of Kansas. Duane simply notes that it "Looks as if the Forces of Evil are winning the West and making inroads into the eastern US." Others (e.g., my mother) notes with some surprise that Washington D.C. shows up as mostly good which defies all expectations.

Happy holidays! And stay tuned for more posts.


[1] Other identifying information such as his role as a professor at Bucknell University has been withheld so he is not tainted by his admission of being a Floating Sheep reader. [2]

[2] Oops.